Remember those wonderful Lincoln logs we played with? Here’s a chance to build a virtual log cabin. Once the cabin is finished, students use the magic of their imaginations to go inside and see the furnishings of a real cabin. There’s a surprise at the end, when they look out the window and see a bear looking in!

It’s a fun story that will be read again and again. Sound effects make this a particularly good selection for students with visual impairment. The reading vocabulary is grades 2-3.  Log Cabin is the first in a set of five related activities.

Immediately after reading the story, students are ready to proceed to the next two activities. Show What You Know About Log Cabin is a three choice per question comprehension test.

Log Cabin Sequence uses the steps in building the cabin and the icons from the buttons in the building portion of the story. Students must reassemble the list of steps in the proper order.

Second Visit

Once they finish the anchor book that brings the cabin to life, students go back in to help tidy up by putting various things back onto the shelves, again with realistic sounds.

It’s important to give the comprehension test on Log Cabin before beginning this Fill The Shelves activity, because the things on the shelves will be different after this second trip into the cabin.

Both the basic Log Cabin story and the follow-up Fill The Shelves are good exercises in following a sequence of instructions.

Focus On Where

Fill The Shelves also focuses on location words, such as next to, on, into, at,

above, between. This focus is reinforced in a follow up activity, Tell Me Where, in which students describe where on the shelf they put each item. Students choose the correct direction word from three choices on each page to demonstrate their mastery of these words.

Installation and Access Options

For both Classroom Suite® and Clicker 5®, the entire set of five activities is downloaded as a unit in zip format.

The entire zip file should be installed from within Classroom Suite® in order to retain links to movies. There are custom IntelliKeys® overlays for each activity in the Classroom Suite® set. A zip file with Dynavox® versions of all the overlays is also available to download. See the Special Needs Access section on the System Reqs page for information on controlling the Classroom Suite® version from PRC devices.

Decompress the zip file for Clicker 5® Log Cabin and copy the entire unit folder into the shared files. For details on installing Clicker 5® integrated study units, click here.

Go to the Publish area to Import the My Own Bookshelf® and Test Me Score Me® activities.

Sounds and Movies

In addition to feedback sounds, the Log Cabin story in Classroom Suite®, Clicker 5®, and My Own Bookshelf® includes a movie to aid the student in imagining shrinking down small enough to go inside and another movie of going into the cabin. The Classroom Suite®, Clicker 5®, and My Own Bookshelf® versions of Fill The Shelves have realistic sounds as items are placed onto the shelves.

The PowerPoint® version of Log Cabin does not include the movies, but does use the sounds, as does the PowerPoint® version of Fill The Shelves.

There is a printable PDF version of both Log Cabin and Fill The Shelves, but these do not include sound effects.  You can also use these on the computer. Use the buttons in the stories for navigation, instead of the arrows on the navigation bar.  The “buttons” in the PDF of Fill The Shelves are actual clip art images of the items to put onto the shelves.

Assessment

The comprehension test and the Tell Me Where activity are included in the zip file for the Classroom Suite® and for the Clicker 5® study units. These same tests are supplied separately in Test Me Score Me® format to follow the My Own Bookshelf® stories. There are also Word® versions of these two tests, to follow the PDF and PowerPoint versions of the stories.

A Log Cabin Sequence activity is a part of the Classroom Suite and Clicker 5 study units. There is also a printable version that could be be used as an off-computer activity along with the computer activities in any of the other formats..

The off-computer version of Log Cabin Sequence is in PDF format, with the graphics and words for three steps on each page. These should be printed out in landscape mode, and then cut apart. In addition to using these graphics for sequence activities, you could separate the graphics and text for matching games.

Bonus Clip Art

All the clip art from Log Cabin, including the construction button art, the various types of logs, and all the furnishings of the cabin, can be downloaded as a separate file.

Applications needed: IntelliTools Classroom Suite, Clicker 5, My Own Bookshelf, Test Me Score Me, PowerPoint, Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Word
Subject area: Reading.
Level: Grades 2-3 .

Downloads-Activities

Printable Activities

LogCabin.pdf (3.6 MB) Log Cabin book to print. No movies. Acrobat Reader.

FillTheShelves.pdf (2.7 MB) Fill The Shelves book to print. No movies. Acrobat Reader.

LogCabinTestsWord.zip (2.0 MB) Show What You Know About Log Cabin (comprehension test) and Tell me Where (direction words fill blank) to print. Microsoft Word

Clicker 5

LogCabinClickMac.zip (14.1 MB) All five Log Cabin activities plus menu grid in Clicker 5 MAC. Has QuickTime movies. Installing Clicker integrated study units, click here

LogCabinClickWin.zip (14.3 MB) All five Log Cabin activities plus menu grid in Clicker 5 WIN. Has AVI (Indeo compression) movies. Indeo will not play in Vista. Contact me if you need another movie format. Installing Clicker integrated study units, click here

Classroom Suite

LogCabinSuite.zip (32.7 MB) All 5 Log Cabin activities in Classroom Suite v.3 or later. Install zip file using the Import button. Custom IntelliKeys overlays attached to each activity.

LogCabinDynavox.zip (1.2 MB) (TITLE) Five Log Cabin activity overlays saved as Dynavox package files. Decompress zip file to use.

PowerPoint

LogCabinPowerPoint.zip (20.2 MB) Log Cabin and Fill The Shelves activities saved as .ppt and .pptx files. No movies. PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint 2007 versions for both activities in this single zip file.

SoftTouch

LogCabinMBS.zip (12.2 MB) Folder with Log Cabin book and movies to import into My Own Bookshelf.

FillTheShelvesMBS.zip (9.0 MB) Folder with Fill The Shelves book to import into My Own Bookshelf.

LogCabinCompTMSM.zip (3.0 MB) Test on Log Cabin story using clip art for answers. Requires Test Me Score Me.

TellMeWhereTMSM.zip (5.1 MB) Fill the blank test on Fill The Shelves Story story with text answers. Requires Test Me Score Me.

Downloads-Resources

CabinCipArt.zip (1.8 MB) Clip art in JPEG format from Log Cabin and Fill The Shelves stories including the building the cabin button icons and all the furnishings of the cabin, plus the bear, naturally!